T/N: Yes, it’s 9 cause the previous chapter is 2in1
When Yue Xingwen and Jiang Pingce returned to the inn, Jiang Pingce put the firewood in the kitchen. The students had already picked a large amount of mushrooms and wild fruits. Qin Miao had dug up a lot of bamboo shoots and came back.
Qin Miao raised her hand. “I’ll do it.”
There was a well behind the inn. Liu Zhaoqing went to fetch a bucket of water and put it in the kitchen. Seeing Qin Miao move skillfully to scoop a spoonful of water and pour it into a pot to wash it, Liu Zhaoqing was surprised. “Junior sister can cook ah?”
While washing the pot, Qin Miao casually replied, “I always cook when my parents are not home.”
Qin Lu echoed. “My sister’s cooking skills are very good, but it’s a pity that the conditions here are limited and there aren’t so many ingredients.”
Liu Zhaoqing laughed. “It’s much better than the public elective course, at least there’s salt!” He rolled up his sleeves and washed the vegetables next to him, and he took out a few scalpel with his right hand, saying, “There’s blood on this kitchen knife, maybe it was left by the murdered. I’ll use a clean scalpel to help you cut the vegetables.”
Several people were busy in the kitchen. Yue Xingwen could not cook, so he called Jiang Pingce to sit in the dining room and analyze the case.
Half an hour later, several plates of dishes were served on the table, and Qin Lu gave everyone a clean chopstick.
Everyone had been hungry all day and immediately gorged on the dishes nonchalantly. Qin Miao’s dishes were quite delicious, and Yue Xingwen did not expect this ice-cold-looking girl would actually have such good cooking skills.
Everyone talked while eating. The table full of mushrooms and bamboo shoots, clear soup and light vegetarian dishes made everyone’s mentality also become very ‘Buddhist’ —— Their requirements in the library could not be too high, it was good to be able to eat enough.
At dusk, everyone who had eaten dinner gathered again in the dining room.
Yue Xingwen also sorted out his thoughts and told his classmates about his guesses. “I have a bold guess—— This place may be an inn used for ‘Immersive Murder Mystery Game’.”
Hearing this, Ke Shaobin looked confused and asked in a low voice, “What’s a murder mystery case?”
Qin Miao, who was sitting next to him, explained lightly, “Murder mystery game, a Murder Riddle, is a role-playing game. Everyone plays various characters in a murder mystery based on a script in which they don’t know each other’s identities and work through reasoning to find the murderer. If it’s an ancient immersive murder mystery game, usually people’s mobile phones are confiscated and they are made to change into ancient costumes and play as ancient people so that players can immerse themselves in the excitement of an ancient murder case.”
Ke Shaobin understood after listening to the explanation, adjusted his glasses and said, “That means, in order to play this murder mystery game, players need to stay here for a day or two, wear the ancient costumes and play different roles. That’s the reason why a large number of ancient costumes appeared in the storage room upstairs. Since the players are coming from out of town, and perhaps had travel plans after playing this game, they brought their suitcases with them, which would explain the suitcases were found in the attack?”
Liu Zhaoqing rubbed the back of his head. “So, the ancient content of our dream is actually a script?”
The students turned their gazes to Yue Xingwen in unison.
Yue Xingwen nodded. “That’s right. The hardest part of this course lies in the ‘drama within a drama’ setting. Let’s break all the clues down into two parts to understand them. In the modern part, the murderer runs an inn and kills people; in the ancient part, it’s a script written by the murderer. Since the female protagonists of both parts are surnamed Su, one can venture a guess that the ancient script may allude to some events in reality. That’s it, the script is based on reality.”
He wrote down the clues he had just compiled with Jiang Pingce on two separate sheets of paper, spread them out on the table, and patiently analyzed them. “The world we’re in is the real world, and a serial murder was occurred in this world. The structure of the inn is strange and this place was obviously carefully designed. The murderer used the ‘Murder Mystery Game’ as a gimmick to attract some young people who love this type of game to the inn, secretly killing some girls, dressing them in bride’s clothes, and hiding the bodies in the storage room.”
Jiang Pingce added, “Inn no. 7, there are seven chairs in the storage room, seven ghost brides, and the murderer is obviously obsessed with the number ‘seven’. However, there is still a mystery in the reality that we haven’t figured out yet—— The woman buried in the graves outside the forest was treated quite differently from the six deceased hidden in the storage room.”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Yue Xingwen nodded. “Moreover, the tombstone is engraved with the words ‘tomb of the beloved wife Su Wanxin’, and the woman who was buried in the ground is most likely not killed by the murderer, but died from some other incident and was buried here by her husband who loved her dearly.”
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Gao Xiaoxin looked dazed and clueless. “If there is still one more corpse, where will it be?”
Everyone fell into contemplation, and always felt shiver down their spine, as if they were being stared at by a pair of eyes.
Yue Xingwen suddenly said, “There’s an attic in this building, could there be a basement?”
Gao Yongqiang’s eyes lit up. “Right! The basement is not visible from the outside, nor does it affect the height of the building. We did not take this part into account when we measured the building.”
Everyone glanced at each other and quickly got up.
Jiang Pingce said, “Split up and look for it.”
Everyone crouched down, knocking the floor tiles one by one from the corner.
After a few moments, Qin Miao’s voice came from inside the dining room. “There’s something loose here.”
Yue Xingwen took several steps into the dining room, only to see Qin Miao crouching under the dining table, taking a brick to the side. After the square brick was taken away, it did reveal a hole of about one square meter, and a ladder going down.
Liu Zhaoqing complained in a low voice, “Just how many hidden rooms does this inn have?”
Zhaoqing Qin Miao crouched under the table, and looked up at Yue Xingwen after hearing the voice, and said, “I’ll explore the way first.”
She climbed down the ladder with her hands and feet, and Qin Lu took the candle and followed her sister closely. Soon, Qin Miao’s voice came from underground. “There’s so much space here, you guys come down and have a look.”
Everyone lined up to climb into the basement.
This basement actually had hundreds of square meters, which was divided into two rooms and two halls. The master bedroom had a large bed, the living room also had a matching sofa and table, the innermost was made into a study, the bookcases on three walls were filled with various books, and Yue Xingwen roughly glanced at it. In addition to some famous words, the remaining 60% were related to feng shui, gossip, ancient fold anecdotes related to classics.
There was also a small kitchen without stoves and refrigerators, only simple countertops and a few cupboards.
What made Yue Xingwen care was that all three walls of the master bedroom were covered with photos, so densely and seamlessly that it was almost like using the photos as wallpaper.
All the photos were of the same girl.
The girl looked sweet, and she had a dimple in the corner of her mouth. She had long black hair, red lips and white teeth. This face was not at all inferior to the popular actresses in the entertainment industry. Moreover, she was very good at taking photos and making all kinds of weird moves for the camera, giving a very lively and lovely first impression, just like a happy girl.
Yue Xingwen stopped in front of a photo, which was different from the daily photo next to it. It was the largest of all the photos in the room—— The girl put on a white wedding dress, wore a tiara on her head, and smiled with happiness.
He pulled the diamond ring he had found in the coffin today out of his pocket and compared it to the one on the girl’s finger.
Jiang Pingce asked< “Is it Su Wanxin?”
Yue Xingwen nodded. “It’s her, the same diamond ring.”
Everyone looked at each other.
Qin Miao walked over and looked at the diamond ring and said, “The diamond ring is worn on the hand, it seems that the two people are already married.”
Yue Xingwen looked back at everyone and said, “This is where the murderer lives.”
Everyone: “……”
Xingwen’s words sent goosebumps throughout everyone’s bodies.
The room was full of photos of the girl with her bright, sweet smile, but with such an eerie, dark basement, everyone just felt a shiver run down their spines, as if the girl was smiling at them.
The murderer actually lived in the basement!
Liu Zhaoqing remembered that everyone was eating in the dining room just now, and could not help but say. “The laughter of the players while eating in the dining room, and the sound of the players gathering at the round table, meeting and discussing, wouldn’t the murderer be able to hear it clearly?!”
Jiang Pingce said coldly, “He lived in the basement and the door could be open directly under the round table. The player couldn’t possibly think that there was a murderer hiding under their feet. In the middle of the night, he could have crawled out and committed the crime, unnoticed and unseen.”
Gao Xiaoxin rubbed her cold arm, and her lip was pale. “It’s terrible! He really went to great lengths to kill people!”
The basement used for living and eavesdropping, the storage room on the second floor where clothes and bodies were hidden, and the storage room on the roof—— such a complex design was indeed painstaking.
Yue Xingwen said, “Let’s look carefully for clues in the basement.”
They split up and searched the empty basement.
Moments later, Ke Shaobin excitedly ran to Yue Xingwen. “I found several boxes of instant noodles and jars of pickles in the kitchen cupboard. I think the killer hoarded them and planned to eat them while staying here!”
Yue Xingwen patted Ke Shaobin’s shoulder. “Carry the instant noodles up, and we won’t have to worry about food for a few days.”
Liu Zhaoqing also came over and said, “I found a lot of sleeping pills in the drawer. I don’t know if he ate it himself, or if they were used to the players’ meals to make them sleep.”
Qin Lu said, “There are many cigarette butss found in the garbage can. The murderer is a heavy smoker.”
The clues in the basement were all related to the murderer’s personal habits. They also found moldy clothes and shoes, allowing them to judge that the murderer was male with the height of 180cm and had a decent shape.
Yue Xingwen stood in the middle of the living room and analyzed. “The female protagonist, Su Wanxin, died for some unknown reason, and the man who loved her dearly put her in a coffin, buried her outside the forest, erected a tombstone to her, and then built this inn nearby.”
“He had plans to kill people when he built the inn, which is why he designed the basement and attic as hidden spaces. In the name of <Murder Mystery Game>, he lured some people to the inn, chose the target, and climbed out of the basement to commit crimes when the players were not paying attention.”
“His bookshelf has a large number of ancient books related to feng shui, gossip, and folklore. It’s obvious that he obviously studied a lot about feng shui.” Yue Xingwen paused and said, “I need to draw the map of the whole scene again to verify my guess.”
The student climbed back from the basement to the dining room, and Yue Xingwen took Jiang Pingce and Gao Yongqiang to redraw the map of the scene.
When he went to the tombstone today, Yue Xingwen remembered a mechanical tone that rang in his ear prompting, “You have come to the edge of the examination room.” It meant, this examination room was an enclosed space, like an instance in the game, there would always be boundaries.
This time, he was going to draw a map of the entire examination room. The eastern boundary was the tombstone; the western boundary was the forest behind the pond; To the north, there was a stretch of continuous mountain range, and of course they could not go up the mountain, but they could see the outline of the mountain range.
Yue Xingwen simply drew a pond, an inn, a mountain range, forest, and tombstone on the map…
He narrowed his eyes slightly and looked at the three tall trees in front of the inn, and his mind suddenly flashed, saying, “Although I don’t know much about feng shui, I think that this place is really in a good environment with its mountains and lush trees. You see, there are three trees over there.”
The crowd followed his gaze, and Yue Xingwen asked, “What do you think that looks like?”
Jiang Pingce was silent for a moment, and suddenly said in a low voice, “Like offering incense to the owner of the tomb?”
Yue Xingwen nodded. “En. The straight, neat three trees are like three incense sticks inserted at the head of a grave. The location of the inn, the location of the pond, also seems like a place to offer sacrifices—— Those brides who were killed were the sacrifices.”
Everyone: “……”
Yue Xingwen said, “I understand the murderer’s motives. His beloved Su Wanxin has died, and he is looking for a sacrifice for his deceased wife. Those books on the bookshelf might have superstitious sayings like ‘To find peace for departed souls’.”
Yue Xingwen paused and summarized all the current clues. “In reality, the logic of the line of murder in the inn is basically straightened out, and the murderer’s residence in the basement was also found. The current doubts, first, where is the corpse of the last bride in the empty seat of the 7 seats? Second, what does the number code found in the rag doll mean?”
“In the dream, we’ve deducted that the dream was a script for the murder mystery game, possibly alluding to some of the murderer’s experiences. It is a pure ancient world, the main story is that Miss Su was sent to Zhao’s family’s house for a wedding. At the end Miss Su died, clues such as guards, a doctor, a woman in pink and a rag doll appeared in the plot. The plot is not complete yet and we need to continue the dream to supplement our reasoning. Everyone please pay attention tonight, be sure to watch carefully if you have another dream after you fall asleep.”
Ancient and modern popped out alternately, and it was easy to get people’s minds confused, but once Yue Xingwen sorted it out like this, their minds were finally clear—— Drama within the drama.
The ancient line was a script for the murder mystery game. The modern line was the real murder case.
The script written by the murderer alluded to his own experience. Through the complete ancient line, it was possible to deduce the relationship between the murderer and Miss Su, as well as the real cause of Miss Su’s death.
From the modern line, they could deduce the motive and method of the murderer, and find all the victims.
After the two lines were completed, the murderer’s entire mental history could be coherent.
This was the ‘solving the death code’ required by the exam!
It’s really incredibly scary
Thank you very much for the translation 🤍🤍🤍
So I just realized that this chapter is 09 and not 08. Is it a miscount?
Ohhh . NVM , my bad!
🙇🏾♀️🙇🏾♀️
I didn’t think of that! Drama within a drama.
Anyway, thanks for the translation! ^•^